You may ask, “If Allah (SWT) has already written what my future is, what’s the purpose of me trying to steer my life one way or the other? “But it’s much more complicated than even that. God not only knows the future, he knows all future and he knows the details of the future and he knows the choices we’ll make and the ones we won’t and He knows what would happen had we made other choices. And this reality frightens us, is there any point to life itself if God knows in detail the outcome of everything? But again I ask you, do we have a choice to not choose? The ultimate reality of our choices —which God alone knowns is a knowledge with which we much acknowledge but it does not change that fact that in the complicated realm of human reality we experience ourselves as choosing. There are rare times when we feel compelled to do something that we would not have otherwise done, which is why the person who’s lost their mental faculties is not responsible for their actions. Nor is the pre-pubescent child, who by God’s grace is given the opportunity to learn and grow. Just as the convert is forgiven all their sins which they committed in ignorance. Our experience of the world is through choice and those things which we do not choose we are not judged for —someone who is raped has not committed a sin, while someone who commits zina has. And even then, the one who is not free, the slave, is seen as less sinful by God —the one with less choice is given more mercy.
Allah’s power is a pre-eternal attribute, he puts in to existence what he wills and out of existence what he wills
Allah has the absolute will over all of creation and those things which we experience as absolutely out of our control, we will not be judged for. And God is even more merciful than we can imagine. When you sit for a test not matter how hard you studied, if you fail, you fail. Though the most likely scenario is that those who prepare will succeed, there’s always a chance that you may fail and all the teacher can judge is the grade on the paper. But God does not judge us in this way, God does not judge us on merely the outcome of our efforts but on the efforts we put in to our outcome. You may strive as best as possible to pray salah on time, but your class runs late, then you miss the train, then you get distracted in conversation, and when you finally get home the time for Asr has past. Do we say, “Well, I guess God wanted me to miss Asr”?No, we pray, and God will still reward us for our intention and will not punish us for what is out of our control.
We’re only responsible for the choices we freely make, not the things that are out of our control.
You may also say, “Allah has created me this way and this is how He ordained for me to act, or this is what my life is meant to be” but this type of rhetoric is often used as a way to stagnant ourselves and not grow and believers and practitioners of our faith. In short, it is used as an excuse for bad behavior.
But is this in fact how we experience the world? We’re attempting to pretend to completely understand something that no human being has the ability to completely understand. If you’re mentally sane, then you experience yourself as making choices every single day.
Eid Mubarak dear readers.
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